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On Tuesday, Charlie Baker Won’t Be Able to “Target Trump Without Saying His Name”

The wind beneath Charlie Baker’s wings blew again on Tuesday evening, as lawmakers received his State of the Commonwealth address with standing ovations too numerous to mention.

The Governor’s poll numbers appear to operate in inverse relation to those of the President — the more appalled we are by latter, the more appreciative we are of the former. (Michael Jonas made a similar observation in Commonwealth yesterday.) And the contrast between the two speaks for itself, loudly, without any need for the Governor to mar his dignity (or his modesty) by stooping to invoke the President’s disrepute. An anodyne reference or two by Baker to “bipartisanship” can do the trick. As the Globe put it yesterday, “Baker targets Trump, without saying his name.”

This Trump-Baker polarity has caused us to overlook important connections between them, like the fact that the Governor’s complex fundraising apparatus funnels money to the Republican National Committee, which it’s using to help maintain a Congressional majority for the President’s odious policies.

Next week may bring a new challenge to the Governor’s power to burnish his own popularity by appearing to transcend the detested Trump brand.

On Tuesday, the Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the immigration bill the Governor filed in August in response to a decision by the Supreme Judicial Court. That decision, which held that no authority exists to allow Massachusetts law enforcement officials to detain persons who are wanted only because of civil immigration violations, has barred police in the state from assisting with the President’s deportation agenda by holding such persons until ICE can come pick them up.

The Governor says that his bill would provide statutory authority for law enforcement officials to cooperate with ICE, but would not require them to do so. (Whether that statutory authority would pass state constitutional muster is an issue the SJC has not decided.) In advocating for the bill, Baker noted a history of state cooperation with federal immigration officials in apprehending dangerous criminals, a history to which he’d like to return.

But that’s just it — it’s history, no longer operative. ICE is now under President Trump’s direction, and it’s very busy carrying out some of his most hateful policies. If that fact was not obvious when the Governor filed his bill in August, the “Operation Safe City” raids the following month, in which ICE specifically targeted Massachusetts, made it unmistakable.

Cooperating with ICE now means condoning raids and deportations without regard to the criminality of the persons being deported. It means endorsing a racist show of force being wielded for its own sake, contemptuously ripping apart families and our social fabric.

At the Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, the Governor won’t be able to conduct business as usual — targeting Trump without saying his name. His administration will be standing with the President — openly supporting the authority of police departments to choose to become part of Trump’s xenophobic deportation machine. And if his bill were to become law, he’d be the one to enlist our State Police in Trump’s cause.

(The Judiciary Committee hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, January 30, starting at 1:00 P.M. in Room A-2.)